Inlet Technologies Gains Momentum as Premier Provider of Encoding Technology for Live Sports Streaming

Inlet Technologies, the leader in live streaming and video-on-demand solutions for digital media, announced it is powering the live online streaming of many of the world’s most prestigious sporting events, establishing the company as the go-to provider of encoding solutions to enable sports-related content on the web.

Inlet has powered the streaming of some of the world’s most widely-viewed sports events such as the Roland Garros French International and The Championships, Wimbledon tennis tournaments, the A1GP and Indy 500 motor races, Major League Baseball, the NCAA Division I Men’s College Basketball Tournament (a.k.a. March Madness), Italian FIFA Confederations Cup soccer matches, as well as the recent Tour de France cycling race.

Inlet also powered the streaming of the World Swimming Championships, the World Championships in Athletics, and 91st PGA Championship golf tournament to Apple® iPhone™ and iPod® touch® users. Inlet is also working with XOS Technologies to encode live and on-demand sports content for an NCAA Division I conference.

“The Spinnaker 5000 was so easy to set up and use that we were able to get our first encodes under way within minutes of receiving our first unit,” said Steve Quinn, CTO, XOS Technologies. “Video and audio quality has been outstanding and the level of support we have received from Inlet has been top notch.”

Although the ability to stream online content has been around for quite some time, many content owners are just beginning to view live and on-demand streams of sports events as an interactive complement to the traditional broadcast experience. In a recent article, PC World’s Ian Paul notes that the ability to watch sports online is a privilege that many are willing to pay for. Viewership statistics also support the fact that sports programming is indeed one of the fastest growing segments for streaming content on the Web. A study by The Conference Board and TNS shows that of the nearly one-fifth of American households who use the Internet to watch television broadcasts online, sports was one of the top five types of shows viewed online.

“There has been an exponential increase, especially within the past year, in the number of sports organizations looking to expand their reach by streaming events over the Internet,” commented Neil Selvin, president, Inlet Technologies. “Our work with some of the early adopters, such as Major League Baseball, has proven the success of implementing a complementary Internet model to drive new revenue opportunities through ad insertions, subscription-based viewing, and other means.”

Inlet’s SpinnakerTM family of encoding solutions is especially well-suited for live sports as it provides broadcast-quality streams over the Internet to any device. With its built-in support for adaptive streaming protocols, including Microsoft Smooth Streaming and Adobe Dynamic Streaming, Spinnaker generates high-quality streams with exceptional quality that enhances online viewing of live sports action. Inlet was also one of the first encoding technology providers to publicly demonstrate and support HTTP adaptive streaming to the Apple iPhone, opening even more opportunities for content creators to generate revenue and build viewership.

Users benefit from the ability to experience their favorite sporting event in an entirely new way - on their device of choice. The viewing experience has become much more interactive and personal, backed by exceptional video quality with DVR-like capabilities, instant replay, and no stuttering, buffering, or other interruptions. Users can easily switch between multiple games or camera angles. URLs or captions, such as scores and statistics, can also be inserted directly into the live stream.

“Inlet has been instrumental in helping us pursue our strategy of putting live baseball games on every device that has a plug or a battery,” said Joe Inzerillo, senior vice president, multimedia & distribution of Major League Baseball Advanced Media. “When we wanted to upgrade MLB.com At Bat 2009™ to allow us to deliver live streams of games to the iPhone and iPod touch, Inlet was immediately able to help.”

HSN (hsn.com), the leading interactive lifestyle network and retail destination, announces the launch of a dynamic new application (“app”) for the Apple® iPhone™ and iPod® touch®. The 45 million subscribers to the devices who download the HSN Shop App now have the ability to view HSN programming 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, throughout the US. The launch creates the e-commerce industry’s first live-video “3-screen experience,” enabling consumers to browse and shop the network’s 35,000-plus array of products from home or on the go.

All the engaging highlights that HSN and hsn.com users enjoy are packed into the clever app, available for download at both the iTunes App Store and hsn.com. Live, ‘round-the-clock HSN TV (along with a library of original videos), the HSN Today’s Special, Items Recently Aired, and the many hosts, featured designers and their tens of thousands of products are among the familiar and favorite hallmarks of HSN programming that will be available through the mobile experience. Additionally, the HSN Shop App brings with it a set of new features, including the interactive shake2shop, which, with a simple shake of the device, generates random product recommendations as well as deals and promotions targeted at HSN’s mobile customers.

“Our customer is fashionable and discerning, and thrives on information, ideas and discovery,” says HSNi CEO, Mindy Grossman. “HSN strives to be the true multichannel experience, and this new iPhone app now allows our customer to take HSN with her, anytime, anywhere, and be that reliable, ‘on-the-go’ resource for lifestyle information she craves.”

The HSN Shop App also makes for a seamless transactional experience, allowing the user to call HSN directly or use the device’s browser to purchase an item. Items can also be saved for later purchase, or emailed to a friend.

While the HSN Shop App is supremely navigable and user-friendly,hsn.com will soon feature a tutorial that walks all new users through the app’s various fundamentals and features. To insure the optimal experience, the app will also evolve based on customer feedback.

“HSN truly leads the way in total convergence of its media technologies,” says Brian Bradley, EVP/ GM, HSN Online & Advanced Services. “The loyalty of our customer base has been predicated in large part on a unique ability to engage them in all aspects of their lives, and the addition of a mobile ‘third screen’ opens up an entirely new dimension for interaction.”

Inlet Technologies’ SpinnakerTM live streaming appliance provides the encoding backbone for the HSN Shop App’s streaming video. Spinnaker fully supports Apple’s HTTP adaptive streaming, which reduces buffering and other interruptions to create an exceptional viewing experience and diminish latency, helping HSN customers move through the purchasing process quickly. Inlet, the leader in advanced encoding solutions for new media, has been a HSN web streaming partner since 2008.

At launch, the HSN Shop App will be marketed via on-air promos run throughout HSN TV programming. Other promotional efforts will follow.

The HSN Shop App arrives amidst HSN’s ongoing multichannel convergence effort, which includes expansion of its Shop-by-Remote service and complete transition to high-definition (HD) format.

Akamai And Turner Sports Bring Live Streaming

Akamai Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: AKAM), the leader in powering video, dynamic transactions and enterprise applications online, announced today it will serve as the exclusive live video streaming provider to Turner Sports for the official PGA Championship App available on the App Store. The 91st PGA Championship will be held August 13-16 with 18 hours of television coverage on TNT complemented by four video streams of live coverage exclusively on PGA.com.

The PGA Championship iPhone App for the iPhone and iPod touch supports Turner Sports’ integrated broadcast strategy of combining traditional television coverage with online and mobile components to provide fans with a multiplatform experience. "Turner Sports is known for its innovation in presenting content across multiple platforms, and this is another example of that strategy," said Tim Napoleon, Chief Strategist for Digital Media at Akamai. "Organizations like Turner Sports are leading the charge with live streaming and taking the fan experience to a whole new level to mobile devices. Streaming the PGA Championship live to the iPhone and iPod touch brings a personalized and high-quality experience to even more golf fans, no matter where they are. With increasingly better connectivity over WiFi, we've reached the point where high definition experiences are no longer limited to the PC."

Variable bit rate streaming benefits the consumer by enabling a high fidelity viewing experience at any bitrate - critical for mobile video as viewing conditions vary dramatically between carrier edge networks to 3G to WIFI. Using Akamai HTTP Streaming for iPhone and Inlet Technologies SpinnakerTM solution to deliver live and on-demand content, content owners can enable higher-quality video experiences at near HD bitrates over WiFi and 3G.

"Inlet works closely with Akamai to ensure our live encoding service for mobile applications works seamlessly across the Akamai network to provide for the optimal live video experience," said John Bishop, senior vice president of strategy and business development, Inlet Technologies. "Working with Akamai we are able to provide a smooth end to end process for content providers to make it easier to deliver next generation video experiences – such as variable bit rate streaming."

NAB Follow-up for Streaming and Compression Tools

Here's a Follow-up for Streaming and Compression Tools at NAB 2009. Most of the buzz this NAB was surrounding Microsoft's Smooth Streaming and its implementation in various tools. This looks to be very exciting and allows automatic adjustment to lower or higher datarate for live and on-demand streams. The quality of the streams is impacted by the bandwidth available.

Inlet Technologies has some tools that have implemented the Smooth Streaming for on-demand and live streaming. They also have a tool that provides great post encoding video analysis and called Semaphore. The tool has been out for a while but now it's included in their Armada encoding product that provides large scale encoding. By large scale encoding I'm talking about hundreds and thousands of files being encoding. The tool can do checks at the end to make sure there were no technical issues like dropped frames, audio loss, etc. There are far to many features to list in this blog post. Make sure you visit the Inlet website.

Wowza Media Systems will have a new release of their server that supports Smooth Streaming and Silverlight. I can't wait. The next release will also allow live streaming to the iPhone. Amazing! Check out there website. We'll that's enough for this post. Time to catch a plane.

Streaming and Compression Companies at NAB 2009

Some Streaming and Compression Companies to check out at NAB are Telestream, Sorenson Media, Wowza Media Systems, Digital Rapids, Inlet Technologies, Kulabyte and HaiVision. Wirecast is the must see tool if you visit the Telestream booth. Sorenson Media is always a must see for NAB. Wowza Media Systems has new server developments and Digital Rapids has automatic publishing after encoding that you definitely should see.

Also, make sure you also stop by the Inlet Technologies' booth to view their Semaphore product. Lastly, visit companies, Kulabyte and HaiVision to check out their Live HD Encoding tools. These are only a few of the items to see at NAB 2009.

Inlet First to Announce Live and VoD Support for Microsoft IIS7 Smooth Streaming

Inlet Technologies, a leader in advanced encoding solutions for new media, announced full support for Microsoft Internet Information Services 7.0 (IIS7) Smooth Streaming technology. Both live events and video on demand content benefit from the quality and scalability advantages of Smooth Streaming, and Inlet Technologies is the first encoding technology provider to announce support of this new platform. Microsoft Corp. and Inlet will demonstrate live Smooth Streaming in action this week at the MIX09 conference put on by Microsoft.

Smooth Streaming is Microsoft’s new HTTP-based adaptive streaming platform, an advanced media delivery method that switches seamlessly between multiple streams, depending on the available bandwidth and PC performance at any given moment. The best possible quality video stream is automatically delivered to the end user without stuttering, dropped frames or buffering. While the Smooth Streaming process itself is completely invisible to the end user, it results in a much improved user experience. It also offers broadcasters the ability to offer true HD (720p+) streams to clients who have sufficient bandwidth without alienating those with lower speed connections.

Inlet is the first encoding solutions provider to announce support for Smooth Streaming for live streaming and video on demand applications. These solutions are ideal for a wide variety of media companies wanting to stream a range of high quality content, including sports, news, and special events. Both Inlet’s Spinnaker family of live streaming appliances and Armada automated VoD management system have built-in support for Smooth Streaming.

“Microsoft is dedicated to improving all aspects of online video, for both consumers and media companies, but we can’t do it alone. We work closely with industry leading partners such as Inlet to help make Smooth Streaming a truly open platform and to make it as easy as possible for media companies to migrate to it,” explained Steve Sklepowich, group product manager for Silverlight at Microsoft.

“We are excited to have yet another ‘first’ under our belt, with this support for Microsoft Smooth Streaming,” said Neal Page, Inlet Technologies CEO. “Inlet is committed to improving all aspects of the online video business by applying advanced technology solutions to real-world applications. Smooth Streaming is a significant leap forward, and presents a compelling opportunity to help media companies improve the quality of online video for all of their customers.”

Inlet also will demonstrate live Smooth Streaming at the NAB show; visit booth number SL5624 for more information

Inlet Provides New Spinnakers at New Price Point

Inlet Technologies, the leader in advanced encoding solutions for new media, announced that it has introduced two new additions to its Spinnaker streaming media family of products. These new versions of the Spinnaker streaming appliance target any organization looking to stream live content to the Internet and desiring a high-quality experience for their viewers.

The two new Spinnaker models support either the Windows/VC1 or Flash/VP6 format and are available for only $4995. They provide the same network manageability, advanced features such as closed captioning and remote scheduling, intuitive, web-based user interface, and reputation that have caused many large media companies to standardize on the Spinnaker family, but are now available at a lower price point.

"Spinnaker is one of the key driving forces behind innovative digital media strategies for many organizations such as MLB Advanced Media, Home Shopping Network (HSN), MTV Networks, Heritage Auctions, and others," said Neal Page, Inlet CEO. "Now, any professional organization can provide the same kind of high quality, live event content to the Internet as these industry leaders."

These latest additions to the Spinnaker family also provide other standard features including best-in-class advanced encoding capabilities, SDI and analog inputs, job scheduling, SNMP management, multiple language support and more.

"We tested many other solutions before choosing Inlet's Spinnaker," said Brian Carpenter, Director of IT for Heritage Auction Galleries. "It's one of the best tools on the market for streaming media today."

Available in a variety of configurations, the Spinnaker family provides price/performance options for a wide range of delivery requirements to help programmers reach new audiences over new media networks. Each Spinnaker model delivers the bandwidth performance and unique features necessary to provide a true broadcast experience over any IP network. Spinnaker's powerful encoding engine makes it an ideal solution for streaming live events to the Internet.

Inlet Technologies Partners with NetBlender for Blu-ray

Inlet Technologies, the leader in advanced encoding solutions for new media, announced that it is partnering with NetBlender, makers of DoStudio software for professional Blu-ray authoring, to bring high-quality Blu-ray Disc production within the reach of every studio. Inlet's latest release of Fathom, an advanced encoding platform, produces files in any of the codecs that Blu-ray supports.

"In the past, smaller, independent production houses faced barriers to the creation of high-quality professional Blu-ray content because of the high equipment cost," said John Harrington, NetBlender CEO. "Working with Inlet, we are helping to eliminate that digital divide by providing a more economical solution for this growing market that wants to take full advantage of Blu-ray technology and all it has to offer."

The joint Inlet/NetBlender solution should help propel the growth of Blu-ray by enabling a much greater variety of content for the new HD format. According to market research firm Futuresource, U.S. consumers are expected to buy 45 million Blu-ray Discs by the end of 2008, up about 400 percent compared to last year.

Typecast Films and VoloHD are leveraging Inlet's Fathom and NetBlender's DoStudio to satisfy customer demand for BD. Typecast Films, an independent film production and distribution company, recently released its Academy Award and Emmy-nominated documentary "Iraq in Fragments" on Blu-ray Disc. The company partnered with VoloHD for HD production work and encoding.

"This is our first foray into the Blu-ray Disc market and we would not have been able to do it without the technology and support from Inlet and NetBlender," said Joshua Warren of Typecast Films.

"It was very important to the integrity of 'Iraq in Fragments' that the Blu-ray encode be faithful to the color and depth of the original film master. The film has a unique blend of color, modern cinematography and editing - the dynamic nature of the film makes for a very complicated job for an encoder," said Marshall Riser with Volo HD. "We've been very impressed with the quality and detail achieved with the use of Fathom."

Fathom and DoStudio together provide Blu-ray Disc authors with an easy-to-use, collaborative solution for creating high-speed, high-quality professional Blu-ray Discs without the costs associated with other solutions.